author...illustrator...guerilla artist
author...illustrator...guerilla artist
It is 9:03 in the morning and I don't know what to write about. The mind leaps from subject to subject (the mess on the desk, the iris in the garden, a dream about a haunted house), and then wonders "why write if there is nothing that needs to be said?" Practice, my dear. The mind doesn't always know it has something to say until the words start moving through the fingers. I spose sometimes I tire of hearing my own words, not thinking them interesting or particularly colorful. But then every artist feels this, moving through phases, in and out of feeling content with one's content* (*she writes smirking). Rather than ask is it interesting, one might better ask "is it truthful?"
"When I'm writing in my notebook early in the morning, whose applause do I want to hear? If the words come from my heart, stripped of artifice and the need to impress, it doesn't matter. But when I try to make these sentences look handsome, everything's lost. I didn't get up before dawn to watch a middle-aged man admire himself in the mirror. Is that a new shirt he's wearing? I'm not impressed. Naked, I tell him. Naked is all I care about. And I don't mean naked except for your underwear. And I don't mean naked except for your charming smile." ~Sy Safransky
she breathes a *sigh* of understanding. (pun intended)
hello keri,
check this site.
http://talentdevelop.com/innerwriter.html
delicious imagery.
have i told you lately just how awesome your book is?
Posted by: Leonie on March 4, 2006 07:52 PMHello there, I am loving reading your little blog - so happy to have found it via many, many links. I always feel a slight twinge of anxiety(?) when I sit or lie down to write... The sentences & often whole paragraphs whizz by in my head too quickly for my hand to keep up. The same goes for drawing... I wish there was a way to open up your head and let all those ideas and formed sentences out onto the page more directly! Cheers, g
Posted by: gracia on March 4, 2006 05:06 PMits so true! we can't just mope about all the time telling ourselves we are boring and don't have anything to say, because you'll never have anything to say until you start speaking! I felt just this way with my journal recently, so i just sat and scribbled and out flowed... words... thoughts... raw and truthful :)
Posted by: charlie on March 4, 2006 06:51 AMI have painted this quote on my wall...
"Write the truest sentence you know". Ernest Hemingway
Needed to hear this. Thanks.
Those are awesome and would indeed make great beads. Are they difficult to make?
Posted by: Laura on March 3, 2006 09:03 AMThankyou for taking the time to write Keri. It is so true, writing from the heart with no thought to being 'clever' is always self evident. Let it flow, just let it flow!
Posted by: herhimnbryn on March 2, 2006 11:21 PMI've been thinking about this for a while...thanks for adding this great quote to the conversation.
Posted by: Monica on March 2, 2006 06:02 PMI feel the same way, Angela. If when I'm writitng I try to sound smart or try too hard to be a good writer, I end up hating the result. But if I write truthfully, without thinking about whether it will be good or bad, it ends up perfect. Imperfectly perfect.
Posted by: Sabine S. on March 2, 2006 04:06 PMi love this!! and i very much want to make a lovely necklace of collaged surgical tubes and call it my keri necklace.
i smile in the mirror each morning-despite myself, i think. if i am holding miles, it always makes him smile too. we are goofy like that. it seems a good way to start the day and it comes easily when my sense of humor is in tact. which is almost always. i know i'm percolating something, seeking an answer if i hurry past the mirror. my little morning clue that something lies beneath, i guess. this is such an inspiring post.
thank you for your truth and rawness.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Posted by: pixie on March 2, 2006 02:49 PMI SO get this post!
Posted by: Hope Wilbanks on March 2, 2006 02:17 PMSynchronicity. These are the perfect words for me to find this afternoon, as I ready myself to dig out my journal and write for the first time in a few weeks, trying to renew the habit. Before getting ready to write just now, I had just flipped through the newest Sun magazine and noticed that Sy Syfransky's editorial will be back next month. I've missed it in the last few issues. But the Sun can wait today, I'm going to write first.
Posted by: Heather G on March 2, 2006 02:15 PMwonderful collage! and post
Posted by: Tracy on March 2, 2006 01:54 PMwonderful quote.
Posted by: bohemiangirl on March 2, 2006 01:18 PMI love the collage! Is that the actual size? They look like they would awesome beads as well, something you could string on a necklace. I love the quote too- I've been trying to write everyday as well, after quite a long lasp in journal writing. It's interesting because for awhile there it was so hard for me to put anything down on paper but once I force myself to put something down, it just spills out. This might sound funny, but if I don't write for a really long time, I sorta feel 'muddy' like I'm carrying too much around, dealing with too much. And the only way to clear myself out is to write it down.
Posted by: Mads on March 2, 2006 01:08 PMThat is a wonderful quote! And so true. The second I start creating for an audience and not for the creation itself, inspiration dries up and I feel like I'm trying to work through molasses.
Posted by: Angela Rockett on March 2, 2006 12:29 PM